Short Bio of Lee WulffWritten by Cameron Larsen
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Wulff was as skilled as caster as there was, at home delicately laying out a #28 Wulff, (which he could tie, without aid of a vice), or casting to his beloved Atlantic Salmon. Using his now infamous 6 foot bamboo rod for either. To his list of accomplishments he became a pilot, and was active well into his eighties, when at 86 a plane crash took his life. While many that know him, claim his life must have ended first, and then plane crashed. We will never know. But we can take genuine appreciation that men like him don't come along every day. And further appreciate that with all his talents and energy, that he chose fly fishing as a medium of his expression. And left a wealth of information and inspiration for generations to come.
Cameron Larsen is a retired commericial fly tier and fly fishing guide. He now operates The Big Y Fly Company. http://www.bigyflyco.com/flyfishinghome.html He can be reached at info@bigyflyco.com. This article will appear in the Big Y Fly Fishing E-Zine at Http://www.bigyflyco.com/Bigyflyfishingezine.html
| | A Primer on Fly Tying HooksWritten by Cameron Larsen
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One other word about wire gauge is dry fly hooks are made of lighter gauge wire, to aid in floatation. Nymph hooks are made of heavier gauge, as they tumble into rocks, sticks etc. and ability to float is not a factor. A couple of other notes about hooks. Scud hooks are curved and short, for tying of course, scuds, but also caddis pupa, midges, sow bugs, and even egg style patterns. Streamer hooks are extra long, at least 4x and up to 6x, for buggers, muddlers, and whole rich library of streamer patterns, used for all types of game fish. Saltwater hooks are coated in stainless, so they don't rust in ocean. And there are a bunch of other specialty hooks for very specific uses. The controversy of using chemically sharpened hooks or not has been brewing for quite sometime now. If you not familiar with this, you will soon be. Mustad hooks have caught more fish than all other hook manufacturers combined, and they are not chemically sharpened. If you do not know how to hand hone a hook, you should learn. For even if you buy chemically sharpened hooks, they become dull, just as Mustad hooks do, from snags, fish, tree limbs, etc. If you do buy Mustad hooks, before use, run a file a couple of times on them to give them a refined point. The chemically sharpened bunch has now even raised bar, with an extra fine point, that costs an exorbitant amount to buy. I just wonder when madness will end, and how all those fish got caught in previous two hundred years of fly fishing. But chemically sharpened crowd has many respected fly designers and fisherman that won't use anything else, and some don't even have a financial stake in their success. So there you have it a hopefully simplified explanation of fly tying hook world and it nuances. There are many fine hook charts online, that can aid in selecting right hooks. But it is also nice to know what want one is reading when looking at hook labels. And to this extent I hope this article has helped.
Cameron Larsen is a retired commericial fly tier and fly fishing guide. He now operates The Big Y Fly Company. http://www.bigyflyco.com/flyfishinghome.html He can be reached at info@bigyflyco.com. This article will appear in the Big Y Fly Fishing E-Zine at Http://www.bigyflyco.com/Bigyflyfishingezine.html
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